Checking in on the Fall 2013 anime season 'midway' through

November 29, 2013

It's time for the traditional midway update to my early impressions. Past time, really, but this time the delay hasn't been
because I've been disenchanted with stuff.

Clear winners:

Kyousougiga: I have nothing coherent to say about this that other
people aren't saying better. It's hitting lots of my buttons and being
clever about it. Both Koto (the younger one) and Myoe are excellent
characters and the others aren't bad.

Kill la Kill: This has sustained its level of frenzied fun and
over the top absurdities; in short it's still BURNING ANIME. It's not
flawless (you can read lots of discussion about questionable things in
various places around the net) and there are plenty of uncertainties
but I don't care.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel - Ars Nova: I have no particular
justification for this, I just keep whole-heartedly enjoying it.

Yozakura Quartet - Hana no Uta: This is another series that's
just plain fun, especially when it cuts loose. Surprisingly it
has the best fight animation of the season.

(I could live without its apparent compulsion to flash us at least
one pair of panties per episode no matter what.)

On the edge of boredom:

Kyoukai no Kanata: I'm getting some pretty gorgeous drawings,
a reasonable amount of fight animation (although it's no Yozakura
Quartet there), and some reasonably interesting (secondary)
characters. I'm not getting the appealing character interaction I was
hoping for and I could have done without the episode that was a giant
shaggy dog story.

Log Horizon: This is perfectly good and entertaining but it's a
bit slow and it's not quite thrilling enough to elevate it out of
this category.

Almost certainly a miss:

Valvrave: This season has turned down the crazy and it turns out
that when Valvrave does so it's a much more ordinary show. I don't
really care about the angst of the characters and the show got rid of
several of the potentially most interesting characters the moment they
got interesting. I think I'm going to drop this although I make no
promises.

Sidebar: Why I am not so impressed with Kyoukai no Kanata's fights

One of the marks of quality fight animation is not only that
there is animation happening but that you can actually follow the
action of the fight and it makes sense. A lot of KnK's fights have
had animation but not quite so much coherent action. Yozakura
Quartet's fights are not as pretty as KnK's but they are clearly
coherent action. A good example is this beatdown from episode 7 (spoilers of course); at no
point in the entire sequence of animation are you in any doubt about who
did exactly what to who (and for that matter where everyone is). KnK's
fight animations have lots of things flying around very fast but not as
much coherent action. If I was being unkind I'd say that they look
impressive but are ultimately hollow.